The board is www.allnurses.com (my wife and I are student nurses) and uses the same Vbullitin software “engine” as this one. They have about 30,000 registered users and up to about a thousand on at any one time. Is it a matter of “bandwidth” and could subcriptions prices at this board utilmately enable such modification here? I am thankful that you don’t use Popups everywhere (as they do) which are almost impossible to close.
It’s a “server” issue, as in, “The hamster who runs in a wheel and powers the present server just cain’t run fast enough, bless his lil rodent heart, even on PCP, which has been tried.”
Do a Search in ATMB under “server”, you’ll find many many many many many many many many many many
MANY
threads, dating back to, oh, ever since I’ve been here, which puts it at Spring of 2000, discussing the “slowness” issue.
We’re all hoping that the moolah the Reader is currently collecting from subscribers will persuade them to kick in for a new, bigger server, with one of those Deluxe Stephen King Monster Hamsters powering it.
But we’re not holding our breath.
much faster server. After all despite being a pain in the “you know what” at Allnurses it’s still a great web site (I think the University of Phoenix pays them a boatload of money which makes sense given that nurses are always going back to school). Maybe the site could raise additional revenues by having especially tricky (or ones requiring a great deal of research) answered by “in house” experts for a fee. I know that I would occasionally pay to have some of my more arcane questions answered (and I’m a relatively poor student).
Consider, I’m taking a Political Science 405 class right now (it was a mistake) and my thesis is “The transformation of social capital and civic participation in America”. I am seeking to build on the work of The Ladd Report who offered the answer to Robert Putnums Bowling Alone. Ninty percent of the research out there is like Putnum, and Skocpol ect who believe that our civic society is going down the drain. I would pay for help in locating counterpoints that went beyond Ladd. I’m sure others would do the same if the price was reasonable (plus any research would become part of the “knowledge base” of this site).
We do have some “in-house experts” who answer questions either on the board or in “Staff Reports” (if you look at the main SD homepage, you’ll probably see that a few of the newest columns are Staff Reports. If they post on the board, they’ll have “SDSAB” under their names which means “Straight Dope Science Advisory Board.” AFAIK, the idea of paying them for their answers hasn’t been discussed at length, but perhaps it should be.
Pop-ups?? They wouldn’t work with this board - too many users would get annoyed, ask how to get rid of them, and then when the enlightened fellows at this board showed them the answer, install a browser that automatically blocks pop-ups, like Firefox.
Anyone know the bandwidth of the common pipe, the one that connects the SDMB and the Chicago Reader onto the net?
Man, you’d think we could let the “Purging of the Guests” kick in before the “Server is Too Slow!” whines started up again.
answers.google.com has professionals that do this already. i doubt we’d be good competition for them
I was also fascinated that www.allnurses.com seemed to run so much faster given that it was built on the same “engine”, has many users, and doesn’t charge any fees (but as LOT of advertising). Their program VERSION also seems to have other features such as allowing posts to editied (I sometimes go back and edit posts years old), and showing the number of people who are own a given forum at any particular time.